Portrait of the week

Mr Michael Howard remained the only candidate for the leadership of the Conservative party after a vote the week before of 90 to 75 against a motion of confidence in Mr Iain Duncan Smith, who later likened the event to a ‘near-death experience’. Talks between the Communication Workers Union and the Post Office ended unofficial strikes by postmen that had brought mail in London and elsewhere to a standstill. Firemen went on unofficial strike over pay rises. Mr James Murdoch was appointed chief executive of BSkyB; he is the 30-year-old son of Mr Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the company. The House of Bishops of the Church of England Synod issued a document called Some Issues in Human Sexuality, the publication of which had been delayed for months; it declared that it did not intend to change the directives of an earlier report from 1991 which said that homosexual people in long-term relationships should not be excluded from Holy Communion, but that homosexual clergy should be celibate.